The Scream
by CarlileLovesAnime
Summary: Now, Tsunayoshi Sawada, recently outed homosexual, able to live without his parents and receive higher education because of his grandfather's inheritance, was finally getting another start in life. AU, Tsuna-centric. (Part 1 of "No Good Next to Diamonds" trilogy.)
1. Cave Art of the Twenty-First Century

**Title: The Scream  
Author: Carlile (****juuuudaime****/****notimetoreconcileme**** on Tumblr, CarlileLovesAnime on ****FFnet**** and ****Ao3****)  
Rating: T  
Series: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!  
Characters/Pairings: too fucking many. Tsuna-centric; ensemble, unimportant OCs here and there; various xTsuna ships that never really come to fruition.  
Genre(s): Romance, Friendship, Humor, Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Family. AU.  
Summary:** Now, Tsunayoshi Sawada, recently outed homosexual, able to live without his parents and receive higher education because of his grandfather's inheritance, was finally getting another start in life. (Part 1 of "No Good Next to Diamonds" trilogy.)  
**Warnings: **In this part alone, mentions of forced prostitution, a bit of neglectful parenting, bullying, anxiety, just general fail, and little to no knowledge of how university life (or working in a restaurant) actually is.  
**Disclaimer: **I don't own KHR, yo.**  
Other: **This is a birthday gift to Zee (Snow757 on FFnet, byakuzee on Tumblr and Ao3), who is one of the loveliest people alive. (Sorry it took me so long, darling!) She gave me a prompt request with which I took some liberties: _5927 AU, falling in love online_. I tried to make it a rom-com. I really did. But you know me, I can't help adding dark themes here and there.

This fic is part one of what I hope will be a trilogy, which I am calling "No Good Next to Diamonds." "The Scream" is about Tsuna, of course; part two is about Gokudera and part three is about the two of them as a couple. Even though they go together and are in the same universe/on the same timeline, they can still stand alone. Part one will consist of five chapters. Let's see if I can pull off weekly updates with this fic… BTW, the title of the trilogy is a line from the song "Diamonds" by The Boxer Rebellion. Beautiful song, beautiful band. Obviously, the title of this particular part comes from that of Edvard Munch's famous work, as an homage to artist!Tsuna.

And last but not least, a very special thank-you to my beta-readers, Aki (akanoaki on Tumblr, Takigawa Aki on FFnet and Ao3) and Alli (fiercetigress on Tumblr), as well as the others who supported me throughout the process of writing this fic. Sorry for the long A/N.

0o.o0o.o0

**Chapter One: Cave Art of the Twenty-First Century **

Tsuna's stomach flopped with anxiety just as his grandfather Ieyasu was probably spinning in his fresh grave.

He laid his thumb over the left-click button – lightly. He didn't press. He couldn't yet. He gritted his teeth and for the ninth time scrolled through all the information on the screen, squinting at every adjective, every noun, every preposition.

_Tsuna – 18 – Japan. I'm a first-year student at a university, majoring in graphic design and digital media. I've never dated anyone before, and I just came out a few months ago, but that doesn't mean I can't be fun! _

(He deleted four of the five exclamation points at the end of the paragraph. Then he promptly regretted the move and retyped them. And backspaced two. He felt like hitting his head against the table.)

_I love art, videogames, old movies and geeky Internet stuff. _

_Like I said, I haven't gotten into the dating scene much. I can't say exactly what I would want in a partner yet. _

Tsuna shook his head. He couldn't read any further. What was he supposed to say about himself? He thought he was too awkward and self-deprecating to be attractive to anyone. He had a difficult enough time cherry-picking the best photos of himself. He'd found only three in which his eyes weren't closed and his face wasn't contorted in some accidental silly expression.

His best friend – one of his only friends, Yamamoto – had made the suggestion that he set up a profile on a dating site. He said the directness would be uncomfortable at first, but he didn't have to play politics as much. Yamamoto was usually right about things anyway. And besides, over his computer-staring years, Tsuna had found online relationships easier to digest, so this should have been a good fit for him.

He closed his eyes and clicked "post profile" as if he was pulling a trigger. As if there was no turning back and no possible way he could edit his page later. As if at this exact second he was exposing himself to the world in the most condemnable, irrevocable way.

Yet, at the same time, he felt a sense of self-actualization. He recognized the crushing pressure that had been looming over him since that one day in the boys' locker room in seventh grade; and that weight _poof!_-ed away just as quickly as it was identified.

He leaned back in the chair, dropping his arms at his sides and angling his face toward the ceiling. He could not help but smile. A stream of energy tore through him, jumped him to his feet. He began to pace to and fro. "I did it!"

His roommate came back into being, having never left his bed in the first place. "What?" he asked, lowering the copy of Homer's _Odyssey_ in his hands.

Tsuna turned toward him with an even bigger grin on his face. "I signed up for a dating website," he explained.

"Good for you." Basil gave him a small, congratulatory smile.

He nodded, rubbing his hands together, and when Basil returned to his book, he spun on his heels to close the lid of the laptop. _I think I'm going to go for a walk_. And he did – he grabbed his only hoodie and ran up and down the back stairwell of the dormitory building a few times. The newfound excitement in his system was just too much to handle.

Now, Tsunayoshi Sawada, recently outed homosexual, able to live without his parents and receive higher education because of his grandfather's inheritance, was finally getting another start in life.

0o.o0o.o0

Tsuna practically leapt from his crappy mattress to his computer. He found one new message, which he thought a huge victory, considering his admittedly bad profile.

_Hi Tsuna! My name's Mukuro. Care to check out my info? _

Without taking his eyes off the screen, he scooted the chair out from under the desk and sat in it. He clicked on the name of the sender.

Mukuro was 21, a student at another university not too far from where Tsuna was, double majoring in comparative religion and international studies. He worked as a magician and hypnotist on the side. He had a rather liberal sense of humor. Judging from the few photos he had posted, he was tall and muscular, tanned, with beady eyes and spiked, jet-black hair slicked back from his forehead. There were two slash-like scars on one side of his face.

Something about him made shivers run up Tsuna's spine – and not in a good way. But he couldn't find anything so bad about him that it would justify a rejection. So he replied:

_Hi, Mukuro! I'd love to get to know you better. _

He stared at the message for a moment, pulling at his hair in nervousness. At the last second he replaced "love" with "really like" and then sent it off. Then he stood from his chair with a clamor, which woke Basil.

"'Severything a-right, Tsuna?" he asked. He sat up, but his eyes were still closed, and his voice groggy and weak. Basil was no morning person. Normally, neither was Tsuna.

"Yeah." Tsuna swiped a hand across his forehead and at once realized he was sweating. He turned around to face his roommate. "Yeah, I just—"

Basil was lying down again. Tsuna sighed. His hands started to shake. He assured himself they would talk later, and maybe he would see Yamamoto too.

He figured that he should go ahead and get dressed since he was awake now, and as he did, he wondered if dating was supposed to be this frightening or if it was just him.

0o.o0o.o0

"Is dating supposed to be this frightening or is it just me?"

Yamamoto burst into laughter.

"You don't have to be scared," he said, sighing out of the laughing fit. Then he saw his best friend's face, and a memory flashed through his mind of Tsuna in middle school, meek and anxious and unable to so much as think about talking to strangers without tearing up. Laughter was Yamamoto's best technique for dealing with negativity. It was just a knee-jerk reaction.

He gritted his teeth and averted his eyes. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Tsuna said. "I know I'm stupid for feeling so nervous."

"You're not stupid. I mean, it's scary for everyone, just starting out. How you feel has nothing to do with how smart you are." He added a chuckle.

Tsuna shrugged. "I guess so." He looked into the mouth of the glass in front of him, watching the carbon bubbles pop at the air.

Smiling again, Yamamoto waited a moment before he spoke. "So. Tell me about him." He reached across the table and drummed his fingers next to Tsuna's drink to get his attention.

Yamamoto had always been accepting. He was bubbly, warm, extroverted, but he did his best to respect Tsuna's social problems, which in part helped alleviate them. He was athletic and many of his friends were jocks, but he never teased clumsy Tsuna – instead he encouraged him, and prevented others from harassing him. He was straight, but when Tsuna came out as gay just three months before, he didn't abandon him, he didn't treat him differently, and he didn't even bat an eye.

"There's not much to tell," Tsuna admitted, meeting his best friend's eyes. "His name's Mukuro. He's a magician and a university student. And he probably works out."

"Sounds neat. You should get him to teach you some card tricks." Yamamoto raised his eyebrows and swigged a hefty amount of water.

Tsuna chuckled. "Not sure that's the kind of magic he does," he lilted. Seeing his friend drink made him thirsty as well, so he sucked out a sip of C.C. Lemon. "His profile says he also hypnotizes people."

Yamamoto's shoulders jerked forward and his eyes went wide. He lowered the glass from his lips, coughed a couple times, and pounded his chest with his fist. "_Whoa_."

"What?"

"You ever _seen_ a hypnotist show?" Yamamoto said. He glanced about, leaned forward and lowered his voice as if afraid he would offend.

"No," Tsuna whispered, bending toward him, his chin low to the table.

"Nah, dude, it is so freaky. My dad had a hypnotist come perform at our restaurant one time for a wedding rehearsal dinner there, and I got to watch, and _holy crap_. The guy told his subjects, the people he hypnotized, that they had all caught flies in their hands and couldn't let them go, and then he snapped and everyone was supposed to come awake and this one lady couldn't open her hand back up. She was screaming bloody murder. The guy just laughed. He said that happens almost every time."

Tsuna's face went white, and his hand flew upward to cover his gaping mouth. "Oh, my God."

They both sat straight against the backs of their seats. Yamamoto waved his hand frantically. "Tsuna, if you end up meeting him in person, please don't let him hypnotize you," he pleaded. "Ever."

Tsuna raised his right hand. "I won't, I swear, I won't," he said. His eyes were wide and he shook his head.

A few minutes passed for the two of them to cool down, for Tsuna's racing heart to slow to normal. He drank nearly all of his soda, even forsaking the straw to ingest more, faster.

"But, yeah, he sounds like a cool guy. I'd say try it out." Yamamoto grinned.

Just like that, dating became even scarier.

0o.o0o.o0

Mukuro replied with his email address. Tsuna wondered if this was going too quickly. He wondered if this was safe. After about an hour of deliberation, he opened an email draft.

He typed a number of different messages and subsequently deleted each of them. Then he heard his roommate enter the dorm.

"Basil!" he called, more loudly than he'd intended, which made Basil jump and almost drop the textbooks in his arms.

"What? What? What?" He rushed to the desk.

Tsuna turned toward him. "Can you help me?"

Basil glanced back and forth between him and the computer screen. "What are you doing?" he asked. He set his books down beside the computer, laid his palms on the desk for balance, and leaned in closer.

"I'm trying to figure out what to say to this guy I met online," he explained.

"_Already_ you found somebody?"

Tsuna nodded.

Basil nodded too, pursing his lips. "Nice."

"Yes, but I have no idea what to say to him," Tsuna whined. He pulled up the message log between him and Mukuro, not that they had written much to each other, and then had Basil read Mukuro's profile. At length, Basil just shrugged. "Make small talk."

He walked away, taking the satchel strap off his shoulder and laying the bag on his bed.

Tsuna's heart thudded in his chest. Nothing came to mind.

He sighed and resigned to Googling "how to make small talk".

_So, how are you? _

0o.o0o.o0

Dad never approved of him being an artist. He didn't approve of many other things, either, but art was one of the big no-nos. Had he paid attention early on, he probably wouldn't have been so disappointed in Tsuna for not being big or athletic or very masculine. Tsuna still felt bad about it sometimes. But there came a time in high school when Tsuna realized that a child, like him, was an individual and not just the physical manifestation of a parent's dried-up dreams.

So he didn't feel that guilty about it anymore, holding a pen to a tablet, his eyes alternating between a blank Adobe _Illustrator_ canvas and the wall.

A shadow of an idea popped into his head. He dragged a few lines into being. Then he set his pen aside, leaned back, and tried to come up with anything that could fit into what he already had there. He squinted, moved his lips, brushed his finger back and forth across his jeans.

Finally he gave up and started a thread on a forum site. "Art block! Help please!"

He didn't have to wait long for a response, albeit a short and rather vague one. Just a link, actually. Wikipedia:Random. (He recognized the username of the poster, too – dunamis, who frequented his blog.) Another post followed the suggestion: "Can't wait to see what you'll come up with."

Tsuna half-scowled. _What a presumptuous move_. It was better than nothing, though.

He clicked the Special:Random link a number of times, and after each, pressed the back button. Nothing seemed inspiring, and very few even usable. AVIRIS, Red Elvises, Angadi, MacCAM, Kohlu. All turned down by the first paragraph.

Then the randomizer took him to the article on the Fenghuang, two godlike mythological birds of ancient East Asia. He read through the page for the phoenix as well, and the metaphorical light bulb in his brain sparked to life.

Smiling, he switched tabs back to the thread he had started and found a few other users had posted more responses, pretty much all of them useless now. "Listen to music!" "Redraw a frame from a badly animated TV show." "Go for a walk, then come back and illustrate a scene you saw."

He typed "Thanks guys (: I know what to do now" and closed the window. He had the perfect vision in his mind and did not need any distractions.

The piece took hours upon hours of nonstop work. When he finally took his eyes off the computer screen for the first time since starting it, the alarm clock on the nightstand showed a fuzzy 3:38 a.m., the lights were out and Basil was fast asleep. Exhaustion crashed onto him at that moment. He turned back to look at his work and smiled as widely as his tired muscles allowed.

A beautiful bird – flowing, elegant, vibrant, and engulfed in flames.

_This is the best thing I've ever done_, he thought, unable to recall any of his other works for comparison. His eyes grazed over the toolbars around the canvas. He realized then that he had not saved the file at any point. For a few seconds, enough consciousness came to mind for him to click "save as" and title the work _Phoenix_.

He eased the laptop shut, stood on wobbly legs, and dragged himself to bed. Light bulb and all, he was out before his head even hit the pillow.

0o.o0o.o0

Of course Tsuna woke up late that morning. The clock was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes, and he sprang out of bed and raced from point to point in the room, failing several shaky, desperate attempts at everything he did before succeeding. The clamor drew Basil out of his sleep as well.

But when Basil tried to speak to him, Tsuna hadn't even the time to answer. He met his eyes once, nodded, and then swept everything into his backpack.

He should have known better – should have known better than to stay up until quarter-to-four, should have known better than to have signed up for an 8 a.m. class in the first place.

He stumbled heaving into Professor Reborn's classroom, but the only things there to greet him were empty tables and a lazy voice saying, "Class' canceled today. Go home."

Still too frantic to think straight, Tsuna took a few more steps inside. He loosened his grip on his laptop case. The room was so unusually dark. He stopped and stood in the center of it, glancing around to see if any other students were there. If they had come, they had already left by now.

Leon, Reborn's TA, sat hunched over the iMac at the back desk. His fingers moved so nimbly over the keyboard that the clacks of his typing blurred into a constant noise. He seemed tired: his green hair had solidified from too much gel and the bags under his eyes were more pronounced than usual.

He faced Tsuna and scowled. "Didn't you hear me? I said, 'Class is canceled today.'"

Tsuna's heart jumped and the air around him grew hot. He scanned the room again in false hope that he was not the one addressed.

"I'm sorry," he stammered. "I guess I didn't get the memo."

"It was on the door," Leon said.

Tsuna leaned backward and threw a glance at the door behind him. He turned to Leon with a nervous smile. "R-really?" He could feel himself start to sweat.

"Guess someone must have taken the sign down or something." Shrugging, Leon brought his attention back to the computer screen.

At the start of the year, Tsuna liked Reborn the least of all his teachers. But now he was Tsuna's favorite. He allowed his students independence but still kept class time structured – not to mention he was the master of motivating and giving advice. He rarely interacted with Tsuna despite the small class size, but as far as Tsuna had observed, he was something admirable.

Only his eyes threw him. They were so dark, no one could tell where the irises ended and the pupils began. And he never blinked. Ever. Tsuna had heard rumors that the man slept with his eyelids open.

Leon was the same way – unblinking. Though his eyes were light yellow in color and almost devoid of a soul.

Once he took a couple minutes to catch his breath and let his heart recover, Tsuna opened his mouth. "If class is canceled, then why are you here?" he asked. The heat and sweat and shakiness flashed back to him, like an aftershock.

He stopped typing and fixed his stare on Tsuna. "What?"

Tsuna inhaled and exhaled to release the words hitched in his throat. "I-if class is canceled, then why are you here?" _Too quiet. Too fast. Dang it. _

Leon had to process Tsuna's words for a few seconds. "I've got some online shit to do. My laptop was stolen the other day and all the computers at the library are taken, so." He looked back at the screen and started typing again. He seemed annoyed now.

Tsuna shuffled to his usual spot and pulled out the chair. Better seats were available since the room was empty, but he would not have felt right sitting anywhere else. He slid his laptop out of its case, set it on the desk and spent a few minutes plugging the power cord and tablet connections and Ethernet cable into it.

"You don't have to stay in here, you know," Leon said, but Tsuna responded with nothing but a quick small nod.

At last he flipped open the lid. The machinations inside the computer whirred, and about half a minute later the blackness faded off the screen. He smiled.

He had forgotten about the phoenix.

Last night was still mostly a blur to him, but he could remember Feng and Huang and how they ruled the skies of China together. He supposed he had left the _Illustrator _window open. Maybe he would post it to his blog – he hadn't updated in a while, anyway.

Just as he was about to minimize it, he heard, "Oh, wow. That's amazing."

Tsuna looked over his shoulder. Leon, with a smile on his lizard-like face, had directed his eternal stare right at Tsuna's screen.

"Thanks," he mumbled. His heart fluttered a little. "That means a lot."

0o.o0o.o0

_Dear Tsuna – _

_I would love to talk to you further and allow our relationship to progress, as interesting and charming as you seem. _

_However, I regret to inform you that I will be offline for an indefinite period of time, and thus unable to communicate with you in the same manners we have used previously. _

_I wish I did not have to leave you in this way. I will make it a priority to contact you when I return. _

_Thank you for providing such pleasant conversation this week.  
Mukuro. _

Tsuna felt his stomach sink. He reread the email no less than four times, at first to confirm its meaning, then to search for an explanation.

He clicked onto the dating site, which admittedly he had been neglecting. He logged into his account and opened his inbox. Empty.

Confused, he searched the name "Mukuro Rokudo" on the site's main page. Nothing.

0o.o0o.o0

He knew it was wrong to blame himself for everything. But old habits died hard, and he began to think that the changes he had made to his life weren't entirely complete. Maybe he was still a loser with no skills, destined to be alone, and could never change that no matter what he tried.

Tsuna laid on his side, lost in his head, staring at the brittle white paint on the wall. He thought about his situation, and realized it wasn't so much that he would miss Mukuro as it was the fact he had _just_ met someone and already had to leave him before even getting to know him. He couldn't help but feel a little heartbroken. He criticized himself for such a foolish reaction.

He curled his knees close to his body and clutched his chest. At the other end of the room, his phone pinged. His eyes slid shut. Tsuna was too tired, for now. He figured he'd get it later.

The more he closed off his senses from outside stimuli, the more active his brain became. He heard his mother's voice. _It's just a bad day. Pick yourself up_.

_It's just a bad day_, he thought after a moment. _More like, it's just a bad week. More like, it's just a bad life_.

He started on a different tangent. All things considered, he was better off than he could have been. He wasn't good at talking to people and he wasn't popular, but at least his good friend Yamamoto was there for him. His laptop, which he had bought from a pawnshop, was cheap and slow and had a love-hate relationship with the school's Wi-Fi, but at least he had a medium to work. His dorm was tiny, in the oldest building on campus, but at least there was a roof over his head.

Okay, so it wasn't a bad life. It hadn't even been that bad of a week. He retracted his mental statements.

He still felt like crud, though. To that he had a right.

Consciousness came back to him bit by bit against his will. His eyes opened bleary and watery to the white wall and he sat up slowly. The room had a shallow warmth to it – a feeling easy to slip into, but fleeting.

His phone began to ring. He sat through the first two rings to make sure the sound was not just in his head. Then he rubbed his hands over his face a few times, half-sighed-half-growled, and slid off the bed to the desk where he had left the phone to charge.

"Hi, Yamamoto," slipped out of his mouth.

"Hey, Tsuna." He sounded winded – probably had just finished exercising or practicing for baseball. "What's up?"

Tsuna opened his mouth to speak, but a yawn escaped instead, and before he could add any words to his answer, Yamamoto said, "I see," and chuckled. Tsuna laughed breathlessly with him.

"So, um. Just found out my little brother conked his head on some playground equipment and is in the hospital now."

"Oh," Tsuna said. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Well, I was on the phone with my dad when he told me and he said he'll probably be fine – he's just there because it gave him a nasty concussion," Yamamoto explained. "But even so, I'm going back home for a few days to be with the family and such."

"Okay," Tsuna sighed. "I'm, um, glad he's not dying."

"Thanks." Yamamoto laughed again and took a moment to catch his breath afterward. Unsure of what to say, Tsuna left this time empty.

"Anyway, just wanted to let you know what was happening. If you want to come with me, or if you want to stay here, that's cool." He could hear the smile in Yamamoto's voice – that big toothy grin he plastered onto his face when things were unpleasant. Even though he knew it to be transparent, it was so bright that he couldn't help but feel reassured whenever he saw it.

Tsuna swallowed hard. "Thanks for telling me," he finally said.

"Sure thing. I'll talk to you later, then." The call ended.

He lowered the phone from his ear, unlocked it, and checked the two emails he had been sent – one just a newsletter from an art website where he was a member (he had been meaning for a while to delete his account, since he didn't use that place anymore) and the other a notification from the dating site. The latter made him smile.

He set aside his phone and opened his laptop. The fan cranked for a minute, worrying him. He remembered that the old desktop at his parents' house made a sputtering noise similar to this, and his mother used to joke that the computer was "taking off," and he smiled. He grazed his fingers over the touchpad as though it would speed up the waking process.

The screen flashed white. It went black again. He heard a popping sound that made him jump.

"Wha—?"

Smoke started to pour out the vents along the back of the computer.

Tsuna's eyes widened. He chomped on the inside of his cheeks and slammed his finger into the emergency shutdown button. "No." He shook his head. "No, no, no."

The laptop did not respond.

"No. Crap. _Nonono_."

Still, no response. The smoke started to get to his eyes. He closed the lid of the computer as gently as he could, sprang to his feet, and paced the room.

"What do I do, what do I do?" he whimpered to himself. He pulled at his hair as he walked. For some subconscious reason he broke into a jog, but just after he reached the door he stopped and breathed heavily. All of his artwork was on that computer. His notes, his photos, his games, everything.

A little white box on the wall to his side beeped frantically, flashing the red light in its corner. He heard a hissing sound above him. The sprinkler heads in the ceiling squeaked and expanded.

Just like that, it was now raining indoors.

"No, no," he said under his breath, back against the wall as he watched the water come down and soak everything.

Confused footsteps and voices gathered on the other side of the door. "What's going on?" "Is there a leak? A fire?" "Do we evacuate?"

Sparks shot out of the laptop's vents.

Tsuna slid downward until he hit the floor. He brought his legs as close as he could to his torso, laid his face on his knees, and covered the back of his head with his hands. This wasn't happening, this wasn't happening, this couldn't be happening. He felt like he couldn't breathe.

He could not breathe. Chills prickled all over his skin.

He heard someone yell a command to the students in the hall, and the chaos grew louder and people were running.


	2. Home

**Chapter Two: Home **

"At least no one died or got seriously hurt or anything," Yamamoto said to break the silence. "It's not your fault." He patted Tsuna on the back with one hand, keeping his other hand on the wheel and his eyes on the road.

Tsuna sighed. He felt the tears come back to his eyes, and he averted them toward the window. "I still feel like it is."

His best friend's hand slipped away and returned to the wheel. Yamamoto threw a worried split-second glance at him.

The quiet trapped everyone in place again, in thought and in feeling, like frost.

Haru Miura, Tsuna's childhood neighbor-turned-Yamamoto's girlfriend of nearly three years and fashion design major at the same university, leaned forward from the backseat. "Why don't we play a game or something?" she suggested.

"That sounds like a great idea!" Yamamoto tried his best to inject joy into his voice. "Let's do I spy. I spy, with my little eye, something that is…"

Tsuna rolled his forehead against the glass to see out at a different angle. He squinted to look past his own reflection.

He remembered ninth grade – that one day in ninth grade, when a high schooler had snuck up behind him in the hallway and pulled down his pants. The witnesses and then their friends and soon the whole school called Tsuna "Underpants Boy" for months, and not in a fond, endearing way. And even after that phase ended, the name still haunted him, just like all the other names did.

When he finally left Namimori, he thought himself able to live down all the embarrassment. He would start over somewhere that he had no reputation and that the people would not care about his shortcomings or put emphasis on them. College was supposed to be the perfect place. Except yesterday afternoon, he had earned himself a reputation. He was the loser who accidentally burned down half the Koshimete dormitory.

0o.o0o.o0

Home still looked the same: yellow-green grass behind the fence, one crooked brick on the porch floor. The shock on Tsuna's mother's face made him shrink backward in shame. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sounds came.

Mom's expression softened into a disbelieving smile. "Tsu-kun." She lurched forward and threw her arms around her son's shoulders.

He leaned into her, laying one forearm and hand on the small of her back. There was a rift between them, maybe from not visiting her for months, or from the reason he finally was.

0o.o0o.o0

Rolling onto his side, Tsuna pulled the covers to his chin and held them there in fists. Another student had told him that the first trip home after staying on campus was a surreal, bittersweet experience. Right now, though, Tsuna felt grounded – painfully real – and he couldn't think of anything sweet about that.

He didn't remember his old room being so eerily lit-up at night, even with the blinds closed and no lights on at all. He tossed himself onto his other side and burrowed his face into the pillow.

What felt to be ten minutes later, he flipped away the covers and checked the blue plastic-covered alarm clock on the nightstand. Close to two a.m. He sighed, pushing a horse-like sound out of his lips, sat up, turned on the bedside lamp and slid open the top drawer of the nightstand. There, directly under the light, was his old science notebook. He smiled and shuddered at the same time.

The pages, only two years old, felt brittle like ancient scrolls between his fingers. Reading through them again, he could see why he failed so many of the quizzes and tests. He took up most of his time, energy and space with spontaneous sketches of various detail and size. With each drawing he saw how his care for academia lessened and lessened and his style developed more and more, and he remembered what he was thinking through each page, too.

_This one. I was drawing the girl who sat kitty-corner from me, trying to get her hair right. I was so bad at curls then. _

In those tough times, when he felt trapped and useless, art was the only thing that gave him solace, the only thing that made him feel good about himself. For the first time since he came home, he felt nostalgic, in a good way.

He stumbled on a group of empty pages that continued almost to the end of the notebook, then gave way to painstakingly detailed pencil sketches of fantastic adventures in his head, intricately shaded, complexly arranged. He often stayed up late finishing these. And then, on the inside of the back cover, there was an inked picture of him, drawn by Sasagawa-sensei. He stared at that the longest.

At last he closed the notebook and peeked into the drawer. A mess of used sketchbooks, dull pencils, cracked Prismacolor tins, reference guides, and a tiny metal pencil sharpener had been crammed inside with no attempt at organization. Looking over all of this, he felt something surge from his brain, down his arm, through his wrist, to his fingers. He didn't care about sleep anymore. He wanted to draw.

He set the notebook on the end table and flipped on the overhead light. He searched his closet a little until he found a sketchbook his grandpa had given him this past Christmas – empty but for the first few pages; then he gathered a graphite pencil and the least blackened eraser he could find from the drawer. There was a moment after he sat down at the small drafting table in the corner when a quiet rationality rose to the front of his brain, that maybe he should go back to bed since he hadn't slept well in days. He shook it off almost immediately, though. He was just coming down from one of the worst art blocks he had ever had, and his self-esteem was in a trench. The itch in his fingers took precedence over everything else right now.

It was like Sasagawa-sensei had told him: "Make art at every chance you get, and when you feel inspired, drop everything." Except now the question was, what was he to draw? His hand trembled with eagerness and the blank white paper screamed at him.

The lost _Phoenix_ popped into his mind, and before he knew it, the lines had made themselves.

He wanted to be beautiful, colorful, powerful – in control. He wanted to rise above all the failure and misfortune. He wanted to be free from himself.

Tsuna leapt off the stool, yanked open the drawer of the nightstand, and rescued a full set of colored pencils from the wreckage inside. Adding that first splash of color, dragging that red pencil along the shaft of a tail feather, filled him with bliss.

And then he was done. It was five a.m. and the air outside the window had turned powder blue and he was _done_. He blinked at the work in shock and eased the colored pencil in his hand onto the table.

0o.o0o.o0

Tsuna descended the stairs midmorning. Hunger pangs had woken him. He reached the kitchen and wandered around the perimeter before he stopped and realized that in three short months he had forgotten where everything was stored. He moved down the line of cupboards, opening and inspecting the contents of each.

His mother shuffled out of her room, fully dressed, but makeup only half-applied and hair a mess. She smiled warmly at him. "Good morning, Tsu-kun."

"Hey, Mom," he said. He turned and set the kettle on the stove.

He wondered when he would be old enough for Mom to stop using his nickname, and stop making him hot dinners and hugging him and checking on him before he went to sleep. Probably never. He was okay with that.

Through some brief and unknown series of events, she overtook the tea-making and fruit-washing. He made one timid attempt at relieving her of the tasks, but she said she was fine doing it, and just then the kettle whistled and she turned off the flame and poured the water into the two cups on the counter. She held them by their rims and handed one to her son.

He thanked her in a quiet voice. She moved from point to point throughout the room, piling fruits into bowls and starting two pieces of bread in the toaster oven, set to blackened just as Tsuna liked them.

He slinked to the table and sat. "So, um," he began, trailing off. He searched for any fleeting images within the steam dancing over the tea. Feathers, leaves and vines, winding dragons.

The clatter of spoons hitting the floor brought his attention away from the smoke. Mom had a white-knuckle grip on the edge of the counter. She stood hunched forward, spewing ragged sighs. Tsuna rushed to the junk drawer. He grabbed the bright orange inhaler and shoved it into his mother's hands. She held the spacer between her lips, squeezed, drew a breath and held it.

"Thank you," she murmured, almost falling into him. She took another inhale. He laid a hand on her back and led her to the table. While she tried to calm her racing mind and shaking hands, he brought the food she had prepared to the table and dropped the spoons into the dishwasher.

He wondered how she had managed without him at home, and he started to feel angry with himself for leaving her alone – especially since Dad had probably been gone for a while now.

She looked at her breakfast with a sense of loss and pushed it aside. "Your father's gone." She folded her hands in her lap, lidding her eyes. Her voice quieted. "He left four weeks ago, no warning. I filed a missing person report, but it got dismissed because I got a letter from him the other day."

_Called it_, Tsuna thought, though not in any prideful way.

"Where is he?"

"In Amsterdam. He said he wants to 'figure some things out' again." She raised her head and molded a tired smile onto her lips.

"You're okay, right?" he asked.

She smiled wider. "Of course," she said. "Are you?"

Tsuna opened his mouth and then closed it. He glanced around. He would have said, _I've been better_, but he couldn't consider any other time in his life comparably, notably better. "I'm alright."

Both went quiet for a minute or so. Tsuna blew at the surface of his tea and downed half of it, regretting it right away – the drink scalded his tongue.

"So, I joined a dating website," he lisped. He and his mother awkwardly met eyes.

"Did you?"

Whenever he talked about dating or his sexuality or anything of similar nature, she adopted a sweet yet somehow terse tone, and conversations always ended disappointingly quickly. He could never tell if this was because she felt uncomfortable discussing it or because he was just that bad at expressing himself with words. At any rate, she claimed to have no problem with his lifestyle.

He nodded and wondered if his tea had cooled any further.

"Yeah, I joined a little over a week ago," he continued.

"Have you met anyone yet?"

"A couple guys," he said, cocking his head.

"Hm." She made an attempt at nodding in order to avert her eyes. "Well, be careful."

He drank the rest of the tea, scooped a few spoonfuls of fruit into his mouth, and crunched into the corner of his toast. Then he stood, cleaned his plates, thanked her for the meal, and retreated back upstairs.

0o.o0o.o0

_Tsuna – _

_You've got a bite. _

– _H. _

He pursed his lips and squinted at the message. It didn't take long for him to quit hunting for a deeper meaning in the words and simply clicked on the link to the sender's profile.

The man had no photos on his page and little written information. From what Tsuna gathered, he was a community college graduate, he had a few pets, and he probably preferred fights in a construction park over long walks on the beach. His first name had not been given, but his last name piqued Tsuna's interest. Hibari. Meaning "skylark."

Maybe this was a sign – he had been rather obsessed with drawing birds lately. He'd spent many of his waking hours sketching them the last few days.

For a moment he considered using his mom's desktop to type a reply to Hibari's bite, but knowing the effect he'd had on his late laptop, he decided against it. He tapped onto the dating site on his phone and discovered that he could download an app for this use. It took him upwards of 20 minutes to figure out how to work the thing, but he eventually found himself squinting at a blank text box, thumbs poised over the touchscreen keys. What in the world could he say in response to _that_?

He sighed and tapped out a message, correcting the typos in every other word.

_Hi, H. _

_Mind if I reel you in? _

Somehow, he felt a little dirty. He hit the send button and his heart floundered to the bottom of his chest. He flopped onto his back on the bed and lay there for a few moments, watching dust swirl through the sunlit air.

Minutes later, his phone pinged again. He lifted it over his head and tapped into his inbox: another notification from the dating site. A grin popped onto his face. He rubbed the bottoms of his feet along the bedframe in excitement, but then he kicked the floor and the shock caused him to drop the phone on his face.

"Ow." He picked up the phone again and frowned at it. At least he hadn't created any more cracks or scratches. As it was, the screen already looked like a spider web from accidentally being dropped and sat upon and placed next to house keys so many times.

He found a reply from Hibari only five minutes after he had sent a message. Tsuna sighed. Not in a dreamy or irritated way – more as a sign of disappointment in himself. Hibari was so punctual, while Tsuna took five times longer just to formulate a response. He couldn't help feeling a bit uneasy talking to the guy, despite the symbolic name.

_Do you live near Namimori? _

Tsuna threw his phone to the side.

His heart skipped a beat. He lived _in_ Namimori. Mouth open, he scanned the room, half expecting to scream in horror at an unfamiliar face glaring through his window. He started to hyperventilate.

He grabbed his phone, read through the profile a second time and noticed something he hadn't before. Hibari wasn't on the site to date. He was there to… hook up. Hook up as in go all the way. Hook up as in go all the way with almost complete strangers.

He closed his eyes in attempt to picture it, meeting this mystery-man at a club, a loud neon beacon in the dead of night, dancing and drinking into anonymity, following him back to his small downtown apartment and letting him prod and stroke and thrust into him for hours to the beat of the police sirens just blocks away.

The image made him flail and toss his phone against the wall. Now there was definitely another crack in it. His eyes opened and he exhaled. He knew hookups didn't always happen quite that way, but he still could think of a million more comfortable scenarios for his first time.

0o.o0o.o0

He woke to the phone ringing.

"Hello?" he mumbled.

"Hey, Tsuna." It was Yamamoto, sounding rather energetic for someone calling at 11 o'clock at night. "Just wanted to check on ya."

He blinked at the nightstand clock. "Oh."

"You doing okay?"

"Yeah."

Tsuna straightened his back, threw his head toward the ceiling and yawned.

"Ah, sorry to call you at a bad time," Yamamoto said.

"Don't worry about it." His eyelids dropped and he failed to perk them back up.

He heard Yamamoto fumble the phone a little on the other end of the line. "I just got done with the dinner shift – it was pretty rough – but I didn't realize normal people would be asleep right now. I'll call you back tomorrow."

"Sure thing."

Tsuna hung up the second they finished telling each other good night. He dropped the phone onto the end table, not even bothering to plug the charger back into the port, and rolled back into the covers.

The phone started to ring again, and he groaned and began to work up enough care to turn over and grab it. Then it stopped. After just two rings, it stopped. _What the heck? _he thought. He opened his eyes.

His eyes widened and he gasped.

He shot into a sitting position.

Perched in his open window, the silhouette of a stranger.

His heart rate soared. He reached blindly for the phone.

"Don't dial one-one-zero," the stranger growled. He crouched lower. "I am one-one-zero."

Tsuna flipped on the table lamp and a dim yellow light spread across the room. He blinked in the direction of the window.

"…Hi-…_Hibari_?"

The man nodded.

0o.o0o.o0

Tsuna jumped out of bed, gripping the corner of the nightstand.

"Get–get out of my window," he warned. "Get out of my room."

One long leg extended from the sill to the floor, followed by another, as Hibari lowered himself into the bedroom.

He was dressed in all black – black shoes, black pants, black jacket – and from underneath his shaggy black hair, piercing ice-blue eyes beamed like lasers.

"Stay back! Don't make me throw things at you! I have heavy things to throw." Tsuna glanced wildly around the room. He shuffled half a step back and poised his hands in loose fists in front of him. "I know karate!"

"Sit down," Hibari barked. "I'm not here to bite you to death."

Tsuna jumped backward and thrust a pointer finger at the window. "Get out!"

"If you don't get quiet, I'll have to use force."

"Get! Out!" Tsuna rushed to the door and threw it open. "_Mooooooom_!"

He turned to face the threat again and Hibari was toe-to-toe with him, hawk-claw grip on his shoulders, eyes knifing into his face. Hibari spun him around and pushed him into sitting on the bed.

"Sit," he commanded. "Stay."

Tsuna stood and waved his arms about. "I'm not a freaking dog! What are you doing here? Get out of my—"

Hibari's eyes narrowed at him. His heart thudded hard against the inside of his chest, and he sat, and he stayed.

Mom's weak voice snuck in through the door, "Tsu-kun?" followed by her head and the rest of her body. Hibari spun on his heels to face her. She gasped. "Tsu-na-yo-shi!"

Hibari kicked the door closed in her face. Then he locked his glare dead onto Tsuna, approaching him step by step.

Tsuna shrank backward. "Wh… what are you…?"

"Don't act so surprised, Sawada," Hibari said. "You should know why I'm here."

He looked to the wall beyond Hibari for a few seconds, trying to slow his brain enough to think clearly. "Because I didn't respond to your message the other day?"

"I'm here to take you away from these people," he claimed.

"'These people'?" Tsuna flexed one eyebrow, shaking his head. "What people? My _mom_?"

Hibari furrowed his brow and his scowl deepened into a frown. For a split second, his eyes went wide. He put his hands behind his back. "Hrm."

"What?"

"You're not…," Hibari mumbled. He balled one hand into a fist and pressed it to the closest wall.

And then he explained:

Hibari was not at all out for a one-night stand. He was actually a cop – a rookie in a police division specializing in internet-based human trafficking. The dating site on which they met happened to be a hotspot for such an operation, especially in the male-seeking-male part of the site. Clients sent messages with the pickup line "You've got a bite." Victims, who were often kidnapped or otherwise forced into joining the ring and prostituting themselves, always responded with "Mind if I reel you in?" That was their code. The organization called itself Nana-Mimi and its suspected headquarters was a home in the residential area of Namimori.

So when Hibari found Tsuna and the two of them conversed the way they did, he had reason to believe Tsuna was one of the prostitutes of Nana-Mimi, and being an undercover cop investigating the ring, he felt obligated to try and help the guy. He even conducted a background check on Tsuna and became almost certain that was the situation – Tsuna lived with a woman named Nana in a "normal" suburban house in Namimori.

At the end of it all, Tsuna had no idea what to say.

"Um." He twiddled his thumbs and then dropped his hands in his lap. "I'm sorry but, I'm not in any human trafficking rings or anything."

"I understand that now," Hibari rasped.

Mom had opened the door just before Hibari started speaking, but she listened in shock throughout his explanation, and now was sitting beside her son, holding him tight and growing pale.

"Thanks for your concern, um. I'm. I'm sorry I wasted your time." Tsuna found that he could not look Hibari in the face anymore. "If there's anything I can do to help, though, I'll – I'll help. It's really terrible that stuff like that happens." He knew he wouldn't be able to do much. He wasn't tough, he wasn't knowledgeable, he wasn't brave, he wasn't even coordinated. But he still had a sinking feeling deep in his conscience that he couldn't ignore.

Tsuna and Nana jumped at the sound of commotion in their next-door neighbor's yard. Hibari noticed as well, and he craned his neck, clenched his jaw and stalked toward the window.

Hibari mounted the windowsill. "Just stay safe," he said over his shoulder. Without another word, he leapt outside. Tsuna and his mother rushed to the open window and peered out at the scene. A group of men was leading a train of teenage boys out the front door and into a van, but the adults scattered at the sight of shadowlike Hibari rushing at them.

0o.o0o.o0

It was over breakfast the next morning, as he and his mother kept their eyes glued to the television, that Tsuna decided he should head back to the university. There had been a couple days when he really considered dropping out, but something about last night made him change his mind. He had come too far to let go of his education now.

The newscaster pivoted in his chair as the studio lights focused on him. "And now to today's top story. Local police officer Kyoya Hibari singlehandedly busted a male prostitution ring called Nana-Mimi. It happened last night in the usually quiet neighborhood of…"

"I never liked our neighbors in the first place," Nana muttered. She grimaced, and she grabbed the remote control to turn down the volume level.

There was one thing he knew he would quit, though. Before he left with Yamamoto and Haru on the road trip back to campus, he logged onto the dating site using his mom's desktop and deleted his account. He couldn't rest easily now knowing what some people on the site did. It hadn't been all that useful to him, anyway.

He spent the entire ride back analyzing and editing the artwork he had created during his vacation.

When he sat down with the housing director, he learned he had been forgiven and was not found to be at fault for the fire – it was an accident, after all. Not intentional. But he was granted allowance to live off campus.

0o.o0o.o0

**If you're wondering at all, "Sasagawa-sensei" is Kyoko Sasagawa. She was Tsuna's art teacher throughout high school, and she basically introduced him to the world of art and supported him and everything. She'll be mentioned again later – way later though, kind of around part three of this trilogy. **


End file.
